Some people are expressing consternation and disbelief at a report by journalist Seymour Hersh that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had discussed the idea in his office of having some Navy Seals dress up as Iranians, and then put them in faked Iranian speedboats to make a fake attack on U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. The ensuing faked battle, with fake Iranians shooting at U.S. ships and U.S. ships firing back, he suggested, could be used to spark a war between the U.S. and Iran. I don’t know why people would find it hard to believe that this vice president would think up an idea like having Americans shoot at other Americans in the interest of his own warped view of national security. After all, this is a guy who shoots his own friends.

Besides, Cheney is in good company in this kind of thinking. We know from reports of the meeting filed by British intelligence that President Bush engaged in the same kind of thing when he was having trouble getting the country and the rest of the civilized world behind his and Cheney’s plan to attack Iraq. It was disclosed years later that in early 2003, Bush suggested to Prime Minister Tony Blair that the US could paint a U-2 spy plane in UN colors and fly it over sensitive parts of Iraqi airspace, so that Saddam Hussein would order it show down. That, he argued, would anger enough UN member states to win a security resolution to support a war on Iraq, and failing that, would give the U.S. an excuse to go in on its own. Blair was reportedly horrified at this kind of kamikaze thinking — but not horrified enough to expose the president as a nutcase.

So that’s where we are today folks. A president and a vice president who both think that it’s a great idea to either send some of your own troops under false flags into harm’s way to get shot at so you can start a war, or, even worse, to dress up some of your soldiers as the enemy you want to go after, and have them open fire on your own guys so that you can claim you were attacked, and then go to war. [More]

The rise of Iran continues. And that rise was made abundantly clear during the 19th World Petroleum Congress in Madrid in early July. A large, supremely confident Iranian delegation attended the triennial gathering that brings together energy officials from all over the world. The Iranian contingent in Madrid was many times larger than the one that attended the 18th World Petroleum Congress...

Of course, the broader question about Iran’s energy sector is not about oil or gas. It’s about nuclear power. Iran’s nuclear power aspirations have been the pivot point for U.S. and European sanctions against the country. But have the sanctions made a difference? A look at the myriad projects now underway in Iran suggests that the impact has been limited...

The confidence that the Iranians displayed in Madrid is further confirmation of their growing influence in Europe and the Mideast. Indeed, their presence at the conference bolsters the belief that Iran may be the biggest winner of the Second Iraq War. And the oil and gas deals they are doing – with the Malaysians, Indonesians, Syrians, Venezuelans, Chinese, and others – provide evidence that America’s ability to influence global energy policy, particularly when it comes to policies that involve sanctions against Iran, is diminishing...

Perhaps the most notable comment from the Iranians came after most of the crowd had left... [Minister for Petroleum] Nozari was... asked, “Are you worried about Israel?” Nozari looked directly at his interrogator, an English-speaking woman (who was not a reporter), and laughed loudly. His peers from the oil ministry joined in the merriment. And then – speaking in English for the first (and only) time – Nozari said, “This is a joke.” [More]

U.S. Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of "high-value targets" in the President's war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under U.S. Federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees - the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

"The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change", a person familiar with its contents said, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money"... Some members of the Democratic leadership - Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections - were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party's presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy. [More]

It would hardly be surprising if it were discovered that Iran has some kind of nuclear weapons program, perhaps contingency plans. The reasons were explained by one of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. He argued that Iran would be “crazy” if it were not developing a nuclear deterrent in its current predicament: with hostile forces of a violent superpower on two borders and a hostile regional power (Israel) brandishing hundreds of nuclear weapons, both calling loudly for “regime change.” Nevertheless, the available evidence indicates that if Iran had such a program, they stopped pursuing it several years ago.

From the U.S. perspective, Iran committed a grave crime in 1979. As we know, in 1953 the U.S. and UK dismantled Iranian parliamentary democracy and installed a brutal tyrant, the Shah, who remained a pillar of U.S. control over the energy-rich region until 1979, when he was overthrown by a popular uprising... Iranian independence is no slight problem. It threatens U.S. domination of one of the most valuable prizes in the world, Middle East oil. Accordingly, from 1979 the U.S. has been bitterly hostile to Iran. Washington backed Saddam Hussein’s vicious and murderous assault against Iran, and even after the war, continued to provide strong support to its friend Saddam, even inviting Iraqi nuclear engineers for advanced training in nuclear weapons development in 1989. It then turned to severe sanctions against Iran, along with regular threats to attack Iran and overthrow the government. That continues to the present...

In simple words, the U.S. insists on maintaining its stance as an outlaw state, dismissing core principles of international law, including the UN Charter, which outlaws the threat or use of force in international affairs. Bush is joined by both 2008 presidential candidates and by elite opinion in the U.S. and Europe – but not by the American public, which by a large majority favors diplomacy and opposes the threat of force. But public opinion is largely irrelevant to policy formation, not just in this case. [More]

The threat of military attack against Iran has continued to escalate as the European Union this week conceded to pressure from the U.S. to implement stricter sanctions against Iran for refusing to cease from enriching uranium for its nuclear program. Earlier this week, Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective. Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."

The Office of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly in favor of military strikes against Iran, and President Bush has repeatedly described an attack as an "option" that he is keeping "on the table". Leading officials and military experts at the Pentagon, on the other hand, have reportedly been opposed to attacking Iran, and the State Department is said to favor a diplomatic approach...

Iran has repeatedly called on Washington to engage in discussions not only about its nuclear program, but on working towards a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, calls which have been rebuffed by the U.S., probably in no small part because any such talks would inevitably include a focus on Israel, the only nation in the region armed with nuclear weapons. [More]